Merixcil's Bleach
by Merixcil
Summary: Mark Vannor is one of a group of teenagers who hear sounds that aren't real. When they begin to see the creatures that makes these sounds they get sucked into a war they never signed up for and an afterlife that none of them can comprehend. Re-telling.
1. Prologue

I would recommend that you go to my page and check out my explanation for this fic before you start reading it, it's not quite the same as your usual fanfiction! Hopefully it still makes sense without me having to explain what I'm doing here, but you might just want a little warning. Unless I think it's urgent I won't be posting any author notes in this story apart from this one, but I will try to update notes on my page. All that's left to say is enjoy! And sorry if it sometimes takes me a while to update.

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><p>The silence lifted with the closing light. Clouds poured over the high reaching peaks of Hueco Mundo, the fast fading light chasing the shadows of the blue stone ridges creeping into the sand, like hands snatching the remnant of the day from the desert. The dusty plains surrendered and let the blue-black of the otherworldly night take hold and the shadows seemed to boil before it; this world was ruled by night. Time moved faster than a man could run, spurred on by the gentle whisperings floating on a non-existent breeze.<p>

The land was softly singing to itself.

From one of the pools of shadow striding out across the wasteland, something took form, pushing forth from the mists in a haze of dust. Slowly, it freed itself from the land that birthed it and began to rise. Past the shadows, past the peaks until it burst through the clouds, only to find itself tumbling through them into another night.

It oozed. Seeping from one world to the next in long black tendrils and plummeted towards the earth. Its urgency dragged it to the city streets from which the scent of an easy feast sprung forth.

_We have no form, therefore we fear it...and because we are formless, we revere it._

Formless no longer, it hit the earth with the force of a juggernaut. Debris scattered at its feet and fell in its unseen shadow as it raised a head as white as death to the skies and howled the howl of the truly starving. The souls of the dead shuddered.

Free of true form, a butterfly scampered towards the moon, full this night and lighting the city. Oxford slept below, blissfully unaware of the cogs turning, unaware that at that moment in a far off part of the future, the fate of their world was decided that night, in that city, decided by those who lived among them, but were to live as Gods.

They were being watched. The powers that were, will be and ever shall be had decreed it so, it was impossible for so many souls to live unaided, in this world or the next. So they sent the footmen, and the footmen watched, waited and disposed of threats to the peace of the two worlds. The formless taken form, the aimless gained a purpose, the soul with no soul; we call it nightmare.

They call it Hollow.

A slim frame could not be seen above the roof tops. It did not take the moon's penumbra and use it as its own and it did not watch the town it knew nothing of and would die to protect. How could it? It was not there, it cannot exist in this world any longer, and it has passed on. Yet there it was. As clear as if nothing were there at all.

It smelled the formless taken form. It knew its hunger and it knew its path. With a leap lighter than the fall of a rain drop, it crossed the city, across a pathway through the sky it had created for itself. It felt the strong pulse of the formless beginning to move, but it knew it, it could find it, Hollow could live in this world no more than it could.

_Thus we are slain_

And then there was nothing there, just as there had always been. Just the moon, the sleepy silence of night and the thunder of the end in the murky distance of a future that all but one soul in Oxford would never live to see.


	2. Chapter 1

"The hell's wrong wit' you? You kick Yama-chan down and then you tell us "outta the way!" Say something goddammit!"

The be-hatted goon moved forward in a feeble attempt to start a fight, only to be met by a foot in the face. After a stunned moment he fell to the floor and began shrieking as the same foot repeatedly hit him hard between the shoulder blades while the three lackies he was with cowered a safe distance behind the attacker.

"Whoa…Toshirin's getting…."

"Shit this is bad!"

"That's so messed up…"

Each of the thugs let out a squeal when they saw the boys foot come down for the final time. One good wack on the back of the head drove Toshirin's face through the pavement with a sickening crunch.

"Quit yakkin ya idiots" the boy shouted over, causing the three to jump as he turned his fierce, light brown eyes on them. He had a scowl that seemed like a permanent feature of his face and only served to make his thick set yet powerful build more intimidating. He looked relaxed despite the beating he's just given Toshirin, removing and replacing his glasses quickly, more out of habit than necessity, and letting his fringe fall over the rim slightly. The hair was perhaps the most striking thing about the youth, it was long, but not long enough to not be a nuisance and as red as it was possible to get without chemical aid. He was a bonefide good guy on the side of justice who was nothing short of a pest and a threat to the peace.

"All of you bastards!" he roared "LOOK AT THAT!" He pointed an accusing finger towards a broken bottle lying next to a lamp post. There were pale pink flowers scattered around the shards of glass and flecks of the water they'd been standing in littered the road.

"Question 1: what the hell is that" the boy asked, suddenly tense with fury, "yes! You in the middle!"

The middle man yelped in surprise "I..er..well..um…"

"SPIT IT OUT!"

"It's a tribute for the kid who dies here recently!"

"ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!" Yelled the boy, flying forward with a kick to the unfortunate man's jaw. "Okay then," he turned to face the other two "How would that bottle have fallen over?"

"Well…we were skateboarding and knocked it over..." the right of the two muttered.

"YOU BASTARDS!" shrieked the boy, flipping the pair over with an almost superhuman strength, "I DARE YOU TO DO THAT AGAIN! I'LL MAKE IT SO PEOPLE HAVE TO LAY FLOWERS FOR YOU TOO!"

And with a final howl, the hapless group fled down the street.

"The name's Mark Vannor!" the boy called after them, arms folded and once again he picture of relaxed. When he got no reply his scowl deepened a little, "just thought you'd like to know, "he growled under his breath.

"If I scared them that badly, they probably won't be coming back," Mark mused to himself, letting his arms drop and looking around the now deserted street. His eyes fell on the broken bottle when and insubstantial figure was hovering. "I'll bring you some new flowers for you tomorrow, kay?"

"Thanks for chasing them away," the figure replied. It was a girl of no older than twelve with cute brown pigtails and a chain hanging from her chest. "Now I can rest peacefully."

"You're welcome," Mark said solemnly, bending down to gather the fragments of glass," now hurry up and go to heaven."

He turned away in time to let the girl vanish of her own accord. And then it was as if nothing had ever been there, and of course, it never had.

The light was beginning to fade on Oxford as Mark began his journey home. He groaned, realising the time, his parents were gonna kill him when he got in. He didn't even have a friend with him as an excuse for staying out late.

"Hey Mark!"

Saved by the bell, Mark whirled around grinning at the sound of Damian's voice.

Damian was a boy short enough to pass for half his age of 15. He had short brown hair that he liked to gell into a ridge on one side of his head; he had slightly bucked teeth and bulbous, blue eyes that gave him a rat like quality. He strode with a confident swagger to his step that let you know he believed himself much bigger than he was; he backed it up with a fierce personality and a firm belief that he could crush anyone who was against him. He bounded up to Mark and crunched fists with him then turned to the boy behind him.

"Told you we'd find him Alan!" Damian called back to the boy loping along behind him with a dreamy look on his face.

Alan was two days younger than Damian and looked at least two years older. He was tall, taller even than Mark but skinny with white blond hair that he dragged forward into a fringe that stuck out over his nose. His eyes were small blue orbs set into an angular face and he had a smile that genuinely seemed to stretch from ear to ear. He liked to talk big like Damian, but was ultimately a more relaxed affair. The two were practically inseparable.

"What d'ya want me for?" Mark raised an eyebrow at the pair.

"We've been hearing stuff the past couple of nights," Damian replied, his voice surprisingly calm for a boy who had just confessed to hearing disembodied voices in the night.

"What kind of things?" Mark asked, starting to continue his journey home. Damian and Alan followed him.

"Oh don't give me that!" Damian whined, skipping slightly to keep up with Mark's long strides, "dude, we keep hearing them and I'm honestly starting to get a little creeped out here."

"Maybe we should go to the police," Alan suggested with real conviction on his face.

"How many times do I have to tell you? No one else can hear them!" Damian raised his voice in exasperation.

"Well, we're not the _only_ ones," Mark pointed out.

"Yeah! " Alan exclaimed, brightening up, "there's twelve of us!"

Damian turned back to Mark, still hopping alongside him,

"We should go talk to the others."

"Tomorrow," Mark's reply was listless, he'd long since got used to the idea that he could hear things when the world was silent and see things when there was nothing there, though he was pretty sure he was the only one of the twelve who could see the ghosts, but come to think of it he'd never asked.

"Tomorrow? No way mate, we go tonight!"

"I'm not getting myself grounded!" Mark retorted, "you guys go prowl the streets at night with whatever it is that makes those noises out there and all, but I'm going home."

Damian glowered at him, clearly stumped by the brilliance of Marks's point.

"I guess we'll see you tomorrow then dude, come on Alan, let's go," and they began to walk back the way they'd come. Mark froze for a moment, weighed up the pros and cons of angry parents vs. listening to Damian's theories regarding the source of the formless howls all night. He turned and shouted to the retreating backs of Damian and Alan

"Hey! Why don't you guys crash at mine tonight?"

Damian looked back at Mark, looked to Alan, looked back to Mark and began to walk back towards him, grinning like a lunatic.

"What are you so happy about?" Mark was suddenly suspicious.

"You've seen how much Alan eats, right?" Damian gave Mark a flash of his cheeky smirk and then walked straight past him, turning down the side alley that led towards Mark's house. Mark couldn't help but grin as he and Alan fell into step behind him.


	3. Chapter 2

Melanie woke in the middle of the night trembling. She reached over to her bedroom window, only to find it shut tight, she could still hear it though the glass. She looked out of her window at the street below; there was nothing there, not even the drunken oafs who usually littered the pavements at this time of night. Everything was deathly quiet, apart from the hideous howling.

Whimpering slightly, Melanie fell back into bed and switched on her bedside light, fumbling for a book to try and take her mind off the sounds. She knew that around Oxford other teenagers were hearing it too, and she hoped that they were as scared as she was. On the few occasions it was discussed between them, everyone seemed to stay so calm; sometimes she wondered if anyone else truly heard what she heard or if she was cursed with something worse.

Something buzzed, causing Melanie to jump in shock. She got back out of bed and tiptoed across the room to pull her phone out of her bag. She felt a weight lift off her mind when she saw who it was.

"Greg!"

"Hey Mel," there was a hint of hysteria to his voice. This let Melanie know something that was very, very wrong.

"What's up?" Melanie could feel her own fear rise in her throat. She didn't want to know, not really, not on a night like this.

"There's something out there…"

"Yeah, I know, it's been screaming loud tonight"

"No Mel! There's something out there! Down my road!" Melanie sincerely hoped she had misunderstood what she'd just heard.

"It's loud everywhere, no reason to think it's outside your house!" Melanie felt her attempt at trying to laugh it off was going badly, her hands could barely keep the phone steady and she was stuttering as she spoke.

"It's here, it's definitely here"

"How can you tell?"

Greg paused for a minute, trying to work out the best way of telling Melanie without scaring her too much. " Mel, I know it's here, because I can see it…Mel, there's a monster here."

Melanie was silent, a look of disbelief spreading across her face.

"Mel? Mel, are you there?" Greg's voice took on a high pitched tone.

"Why would you say something like that?" Melanie hissed angrily down the phone, "You know I find it hard enough to sleep when it's screaming, why would you try and make this worse for me?"

"What? Mel, I'm being serious! Please ju-" Melanie hung up, threw her mobile back into her bag and stormed back to her bed. Greg was one of her best friends, but he could be a complete dick at times.

Mel paused, and realised that the screams were getting further away. She sat up for another hour until the sound had faded all together and then fell into an exhausted sleep.

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><p>She turned a corner and saw it before her.<p>

Hollow.

It loomed over the human house, spreading its wide; fish faced lips, raised enormous black hands and let her see through the window of the hole in its chest. The scent of corrupted soul was strong on the evening breeze, changing slightly as it smelt her, joy ringing through the night. It had finally found a real meal.

She faced the Hollow, at not quite 4"9 it looked a seriously mismatched fight. She drew her sword from her side and faced the monster with a fierce determination in her dark blue eyes, a single lock of her shoulder length black hair falling across her face.

She charged full force at the creature, jumping at the last second, bringing her sword down where the creature's white face has been only a split second before, feeling a wave of disappointment as her katana slashed uselessly at nothing. She landed catlike and rounded on the Hollow, only to find that it had once again moved. Hearing something move through the air above her she dived out of the way of the attack, and turned to plunge her sword into the offending hand that had tried to crush her, a slight smile gracing her lips and she felt the sickening tearing of flesh and muscle.

She tried to remove her katana from the beast's paw, but found it stuck firm. Panicking and blinded by Hollow blood, she failed to see its other hand as it lashed out, hitting her full force in the stomach. She flew ten feet and hit the pavement hard.

Pulling herself to her hands and knees she coughed heavily and wasn't surprised to see blood splatter the pavement as she did so. She reached to her side and winced a little, counting three broken ribs. She sighed a little and began to drag herself to her feet, wishing it were possible to just give up at this point, no chance of that tonight, she was made of stronger stuff than humans. She looked up and saw the creature sniffing the air again, and for a moment she wondered if the dumb monster had lost the scent of her soul.

Of course, that would be the kind of luck that you just didn't have in this line of work.

She had thought the Hollow was the reason for the exceedingly high reiatsu that had been pulsating from the area; logically there was no other explanation. So why could she feel many souls moving within the mass of energy that stood before her?

She sank through the layers of reiatsu, trying to pick the one from the other, until she had found four souls, three of which had noticeably high reiatsu and none of those belonging to the Hollow. They were human souls. Living human souls that could make it into Seireitei no questions asked.

As if the shock of this hadn't been enough, she felt one of the three souls stir, not a full flare, but the owner of that reiatsu was defiantly alarmed. It was a soul made of the kind of energy she would have expected to find in a captain, and even now, on this side of death, she could feel its colour.

"Sweet Shinigami," She murmured under her breath, "how have we not found them before? How have we not noticed _him_?"

Through her confusion, she realised that voices were coming from somewhere. They were talking about….talking about her….about the Hollow. Someone could see them.

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><p>Mark watched in silent awe as the girl appeared. She couldn't have been older than 12 at that height, but she fought with skill…at least, that was what it looked like to Mark.<p>

When the girl was thrown to the floor with a sickening crunch, Mark couldn't help but let out a cry of alarm which was quickly silenced by Damian wrapping his arms firmly around his head screaming

"Are you an idiot? Shut up or it'll find us!"

"Yeah, cos you're quiet as a mouse there Damian, aren't you?" Mark threw the pint sized boy off perhaps a little too harshly and ran back to the window. The girl was standing now, bent over slightly and clutching at her side with an expression of shock on her face, but Mark's attention was soon drawn to the monster, which seemed to have made an abrupt change of target.

"Mark, I think you should move," Alan's voice was so uncharacteristically authoritative that Mark stepped away from his window unquestioningly, just moments before the creature brought a huge fist down and through the roof. For a second, all three boys stared at the spot where the unearthly hand had passed straight through the ceiling of Mark's bedroom leaving no damage to the building, and for a second they all had the same idea that maybe the creature would be unable to hurt them.

This idea was dropped as soon as the hand made contact with Damian's legs, ripping them out from under him and sending him rolling across the room. Mark dived over to where his friend had fallen, while Alan dropped to the floor and tried to cram himself under a set of draws for safety. Mark found Damian out cold with his left leg at a very unnatural angle, he started to shake the boy, shouting his name to try and wake him up.

Suddenly, Mark felt something hot and wet hit the back of his neck. He reached up to find out what it was and saw blood on his hand. He wiped it onto his jeans quickly and was stunned to see it vanish in a twinkling of the air. He turned his head to the window to see the girl standing on the sill with her sword drawn and bloody and a faint outline in the air that was exactly the same shape and in exactly the same place as the monster had been the last time he looked.

"Did you kill it?" Mark asked frantically, turning to face the girl for the first time, "I mean, thanks, if you did."

The girl continued to stand at the window, her heard turned away from the three boys and he breathing heavy. She was still clutching her side where the Hollow had broken her ribs and her sword arm hung uselessly at her side. Her black shihakusho wasn't torn but had been dirtied enough to give her the look of a soldier who had served their time.

"I'm Mark," Mark walked across to the window ad offered a hand to be shaken, "who are you?"

He turned to face him, jerking her head to flick her rogue lock of hair aside. She fixed Mark with her midnight blue eyes and tried to find a reason for the boy's reiatsu.

"Are you ok?" Mark was beginning to feel freaked out by the girl's silence, "do you think you could help my friend?" he said, gesturing towards Damian who was beginning to come round while Alan tried to distract him from his broken leg.

"Mark, we're gonna need to call an ambulance or something," Alan shouted over to Mark.

"I thought you said it wasn't that bad!" Damian retorted, sounding panicked.

Mark sighed and turned back to the girl, "we can call an ambulance for you too," he said, trying to sound as kind as possible. The girl shook her head and gave a little half laugh, pushing her katana back into its sheath. She turned back to Mark and fixed him with smiling eyes.

"Watashi o wasurete," she murmured, and the leapt into the night, bouncing off the very air itself. This world was so strange! It was impossible to think she had ever been a part of it.

Mark tried to watch the girl's sky acrobatics, but she was too fast for his eyes and before he could take a breath he had lost sight of her among the moonlit clouds.

"Mark! Stop daydreaming and HELP ME!" Mark was brought back down to an earth with a bump by Alan's shout. Damian had gone an unhealthy shade of white and was making some very odd sounds, his eyes glued to his misshapen leg. "I've called an ambulance, they'll be here in however long it takes to get here from the John Radcliffe at this time of night, I'll go with Damian to the hospital, I'll call his parents, and I'll sort everything out. All I need you to do is to come up with an explanation for this leg!"

Mark's brow was creased and his eyes were glassy with confusion. He seemed to stare right through his two friends as Alan frantically jabbered at Damian in an attempt to calm him down. He knew that right now he needed to pull himself down to earth and do something to help his friend but something was stopping him. It was as if his friends and the place that he needed to be were behind a wall of fire that he wasn't ready to put out. He had the sensation that for the first time in his life he was truly aware of the world around him and that he was never going to be able to fall back into the naive boy he had been just half an hour before.

And then it was over.

"What on earth happened in here?" Mark's mum was currently sporting an expression of panic that seemed totally appropriate for a mother walking into a room to find her son's friend in a state of shock with his knee bent back the wrong way.

Mark searched his brain for a moment for something that sounded reasonably plausible….

"We were skateboarding!" He said sheepishly, not even bothering to look at Alan's exasperated expression that inevitable graced his face after hearing the pathetic excuse. Mark almost thought he heard

"Even I could do better than that…." Being muttered under the gangly blonde's breath.

"Alan's already called an ambulance Mum, they'll be here soon"

Mark's mum gave the three boys a long hard look, and then seemed to remember that one of them had just smashed his leg to smithereens and could probably use a more adept carer than his clumsy 15 year old friend.

"You two boys go wait outside for the ambulance...ah ah ah!" She cut Alan off before he could argue with her, "Damian will be fine with me. Go outside, wait, and try to come up with some really good reasons for why you would be skateboarding in the house, " her face darkened suddenly "I can assure you that Mark's life will be pretty miserable over the next few weeks if I'm not impressed"

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><p>Five minutes later and Mark and Alan had been standing silently on the drive for what felt like hours. Mark was acutely aware that the silence between them had reached a painful level of awkwardness, not that he could blame Alan for keeping silent; it had been a bullshit excuse.<p>

"What happened back there?" Mark was surprised when Alan spoke first

"Oh…yeah, sorry about that," Mak scuffed his feet on the pavement as he spoke, "I guess I couldn't have come up with a worse excuse if I tried.

"Not that you idiot" Alan's voice was weary and when Mark turned to face him he realised that his friend wasn't up for looking him in the eye

"What d'you mean?"

"Before your mum came in and you were all…" Alan sighed and stared more intently at the ground

"All what?"

"On fire." Alan turned his eyes to meet Mark's, "just standing in blue flames like it was nothing, like you couldn't feel a thing! And we could feel it, you know, Damian and me, like you were some kind of…of…I don't even know what you were, but it was everywhere." Alan's eyes were scarred, but he held Mark's gaze, "What happened to you?"

"I don't know," Mark whispered, slumping back into himself. It hadn't just been him who felt it, it was real, for a few moments there, he had not been part of this life. The realisation of this brought the world crashing down around him, his mind scattered with hypothesis as to the reason for his dropping away from reality.

Next to him, Alan continued to fix his worried gaze on Mark as the siren of an ambulance became audible over the quiet night air of the city.


End file.
